March 24, 2010 -
Washington, DC - In an address to the National Air Traffic Controllers
Association (NATCA) in Orlando on Tuesday, NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P.
Hersman lauded controllers for their role in keeping the number of
runway incursions low while challenging the Federal Aviation
Administration to hasten the pace of its efforts to improve runway
safety.

Attributing the
decline in runway related incidents and accidents in part to "robust
procedures, safe designs, and well-trained and alert controllers and
pilots," Hersman said that "we still have a lot of work to do," and that
the FAA needs to move more aggressively to lower the risk of runway
accidents.

Hersman
chaired the NTSB's February meeting in which runway safety was again
voted onto its Most Wanted List of Safety Improvements where it has been
since its inception in 1990.

The Safety Board's recommendations to the FAA includes
providing immediate warnings of probable collisions and incursions
directly to flight crews in the cockpit, r

equiring specific
ATC clearance for each runway crossing; requiring operators to
install cockpit moving map displays or an automatic system that
alerts pilots when a takeoff is attempted on a taxiway or a runway
other than the one intended; and requiring a landing distance
assessment with an adequate safety margin for every landing.

Citing an ongoing investigation of an incident in
which a 767 landed on a taxiway in Atlanta in October, Hersman said that
the NTSB took a strong interest in the event "because we want to know
what led a professional flight crew to mistake a taxiway for a runway,
whether the controllers could have detected the misaligned final
approach to landing and intervened, and whether there are technological
tools that can be used to prevent such incidents from ever occurring in
the first place." Although no one was injured in the incident, Hersman
said that "if this event had resulted in a fatal collision, there would
be - far and wide - immediate and understandable calls for changes."

Hersman also cited human fatigue as an area that the
Safety Board has become particularly focused on, saying that "We are
seeing fatigue as a causal or contributing factor in numerous accidents
across all transportation modes." The NTSB has made recommendations to
the FAA to set working hour limits for flight crews, aviation mechanics,
and air traffic controllers, and has asked the FAA develop a fatigue
awareness and countermeasures training program for controllers and those
who schedule them for duty.

Recently, NATCA
and the FAA established a working group to collaboratively address the
human fatigue issues that the NTSB has identified. Hersman noted the
significance of this positive step by the leadership of both
organizations and called it a very encouraging development.

Concluding with an
invitation for air traffic controllers to participate in a three-day
forum on pilot and controller excellence that the NTSB will be holding
in Washington
in May, Hersman emphasized the value of learning from the numerous
examples of superior job performance by controllers. "Through our work
we are very good at finding out what went wrong, but frankly, it is just
as important to know what is going right, because we want to replicate
that throughout the entire national airspace system," she said.